16 Personalities Fit what 9 Uglies

I don't know why I didn't think of using Myers-Briggs 16 Personalities before. I sketched out my Ugly Fool Characters and I think an added touch of making them one of the sixteen would make it easier to wrangle them.

I have "Please Understand Me II" by David Keirsey and I read the hell out of that book. I went to highlighting heaven. It's one of the few books I couldn't put down. I gobbled it up. During 2004 and 2005 I made any and everyone I knew take that test so I could give them their personality, and it was so much fun.

How many people took the test? I kept totals. Yes, yes I did. 73 people.

Reading the personality I scored as made me laugh. I nodded a lot. I even pointed out where I'm similar with Jeremiah Jericho. I did model him after a few of my traits, but overall I wanted him to be different and he is. He's more confident than I ever was as a teenager and comfortable being different. Not totally comfortable. I guess it's an odd combination of wanting to be comfortable and exuding enough of it to seem comfortable. Inside of his own head he's not comfortable. He's rather uncomfortable. It's getting a bit deep.

With my 9 little Uglies I need to separate them from me. It's easier with them than it is with Jeremiah Jericho. I put so much connection with me and him that it's easier to write him. I sometimes wonder if anyone who reads it gets what's actually going on. Jeremiah Jericho has his voice, Christopher's voice and Jeffrey's voice housed in his head. That's not normal. Even in character world's, it's not normal. Characters have their own space when they're inside their own head. They don't share. That's their retreat. Jeremiah has to share. There's a rich reason for that.

The 9 Uglies (as I've now coined as their nickname. I like it.) are nothing like me. These are people I don't think would ever choose to hang out with me. Even if I fit their idea candidate for their club's helping. I asked a question on a website that a few writers frequent, Would you be friends with your characters? How would you get along with them? I got some interesting answers, but I thought that I would get along fine with Jeremiah Jericho. The 9 Uglies would be a different story. Maybe they wouldn't mind me and I'd mind them more. Most of them, I believe, would rub me the wrong way and I couldn't be in the same room as them. I think Laleh, Lalana, Fallon, Grayson and Sanford would be the most difficult for me to relate to. Unity and Yannis I would connect with. Oliver and Olivia would be a hit and miss kind of deal. Maybe with Olivia but not Oliver.

I love them. They're my characters. I just don't think we'd hang out and go clubbing or whatever.

I'm going to work on the 9 Uglies' personalities tomorrow and hammer out a new episode.

What I Gotta Work On

It's been hinted at that my narrative needs to be a little stronger. I didn't really grasp what that meant until Wednesday night at my writing group. Which was more like a writing trio than group. Whatever.

Jeremiah (my main character) has to give more input on the situations he's in. I grasped that in first person the character needs to be more involved. In my head I over complicated it because of there being two additional voices that he contends with for inner thoughts. When he actually thinks in present moment for the story there is a great chance that Christopher or Jeffrey will respond. I can't have him think normally like any other first person character could get away with in their story. 

It can't be: 

I can't believe this is happening. 

Because in reality it would be ( < > = Christopher talking and + + = Jeffrey talking and without either is Jeremiah...as shown above)

I can't believe this is happening. 

<Shocking that you can't see past the problems you've created.>

+You can mend this. Hear the waves and think.+

And then a conversation would continue with Jeremiah addressing the positive spin of Jeffrey or the in-your-face reality of Christopher. 

I've avoided him giving comments that can't be turned into conversation because ignoring isn't something Christopher is capable of doing without purpose. 

On Wednesday it was just pointed out again. Nothing new, it just hit me what I need to do. What I need to work on. It was an oh, I see! kind of moment. I don't know why it took this long to grasp this, but it did. Jeremiah has to filter (and he does already, but not enough) the story through his idea of what's going on. Yes, Christopher is keeping him in the dark and he doesn't understand why. I have to give him the floor to predict either correctly or wrongly what's going to happen so that he can either fool or hint at what is going to come to pass by the end of the book. 

I finished the first book and I'm about twenty pages from finishing the second book...this is something that when I read back over what I've written I can add it in. It didn't click and it did that day, so I'm glad I went. I was wondering why I bothered going since not many people were there, but it worked out this time. 

I'm watched "Soul Eater"  yesterday and for the past few episodes Death the Kid and Maka have been questioning what the Academy was doing. They questioned it with their thoughts and their actions. They colored the viewer's view of what was going on with their doubt. I'm a story teller so I knew what their characters were up to, but still it is a way to get the viewer to feel the character's problem with what's going on and give the viewer an idea of what the character thinks is going to happen. In all my story weaving I have been failing on this with Jeremiah. I have to strengthen that. And once I do, I will feel way better about how I'm telling the story than I do at this moment. 

With Ugly Fools I'm able to do that with ease. I can give the view of the character and their expectations and allow those things to taint the narration for better or for worse. It's easier to do so with only one voice in the head. I can do it and I have done it. It's another thing I have to contend with writing Jeremiah Jericho. It's so heavy and as I'm writing Ugly Fools I realize how thick Jeremiah Jericho is. It's fun, but it so complicated to maneuver. 

I know my ending for each book of the Trilogy. Jeremiah doesn't know those endings. Christopher could very well know. It's Jeremiah telling the story. With each revelation of what's going on it should cause him to speculate what's happening and in essence help the reader understand what's going on. 

I have to make it where Jeremiah is talking more to the reader. Not breaking the fourth wall (though I don't have a problem with that) but breaking free of Christopher and Jeffrey who will cause him to have tangentidious. 

It's really great to have these kinds of moments. When one hears that a book took so many years to write, they wonder why? Or if they could even bare that length of time. Right now Jeremiah Jericho has taken three years to write, including edits. Which I'm not done with edits. I think back to when I first finished the first edition of Jeremiah Jericho: Allowance and how proud I was and how it just HAD to be picked up by someone. I hadn't sent it out to anyone, I just knew it was great as is. Several edits later and after sending it to five agents and it being rejected four times (so far), I'm glad it wasn't ready that first time. I have so much to work on, to get right. What I've put into this is nothing short of epic and I can't just let it go and it fail so bad that it would never be picked up and read again. I have to get it right. 

It's like an invention that I know is life changing. But the battery power isn't working as well as it should, however when it does work it's amazing. I have to fix the glitches so that when it's released there is minor issues to contend with. Minor so much so that when someone complains about a plot hole somewhere I will go, "Oh you have no idea what a plot hole is." Because I'll be thinking of all the massive plot holes I fixed because of the many moons it took to make this trilogy astonishing. 

I understand that it'll never be perfect and I'm not aiming for perfect. I'm aiming for satisfied. I'm aiming for that feeling of accomplishment that will send shivers of wow down my spine when I think about the overall trilogy. I understand that I will leave something out or that there will be questions I don't fully answer, but as long as I can sit back and smile and feel fine when the complaints rings over the internet...I'd have accomplished what I wanted. I don't want to grumble and defend the book. I want the book to defend itself by how good it is despite the snags. I hate defending my writing. I don't really do that very often. Not everyone's going to like it and that's just how it is. 

As long as I like it despite the nitpicking, there will be nothing anyone can say that'll ruffle my feathers. 

I will work on my narrative and get that much closer to feeling satisfied. 

MIA no more

I've been MIA because I was.

I've been writing and going to a writer's group, still. So I didn't stop writing. I only stopped blogging.

I've decided to start up again and right now I've decided to use I've a lot. How am I doing? Since my last blog I've come up with a lot of great ideas for Jeremiah Jericho. I wrote a good query for it and sent it to, I think, five agents. Four of them have sent back rejections. All of the rejections were expected. I wasn't disappointed in them not wanting it. I'm waiting for the final one, because that's the one I expect to say yes. It's not like one of those yes replies that I'm sure of. It's more of a hopeful yes. I hope she says yes. Or at least she says yes to reading a little more of my novel.

I've stopped writing movie reviews for a while, but I've not stopped writing I've. As one can see. Anyway, by not writing movie reviews I can see movies, complain about them in my head and write my novel. It works out for me.

Where am I at right now with Jeremiah Jericho? I'm fixing the formatting of the first book. Christopher and Jeffrey's dialogue. I'm also writing the second novel by the seat of my pants. I had a sketchy idea of where I wanted it to go, but based on how I've written it, it veered off course. A bad thing? I don't know. I think it's an okay thing (you should Google where OK started, it's pretty interesting...saw it in a movie).

Initially I wanted Jeremiah Jericho to be local. I didn't want him to venture off into the world. Mainly because I didn't want to have to dabble in research of places and such. But I allowed the story to control me and dictate where it wanted to go and I've ended up in places I've never visited. So I had to do a little research. It's not going to stop, either. It's become a world thing and it's annoying that's not what I wanted. I'm dealing with that realization. Sadly. It's not too bad, so that's good.

My friend created what Jeremiah Jericho would look like. I liked it, except for the long hair, but I got over that. It's pretty darn cool, I think.

I'm impressed, as I told him. I'm still in awe. It's just neat to see my character in drawn form. I've had other people draw him, but it's not as cool as having a friend do it.

That's where I'm at. It's late and I shouldn't have started this, but I thought I'd update it for fun. I don't know how many people read this, but if no one it's more like a writing diary of sorts.

Uh, Holden that Thought

I am reading “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger because someone told me that Jeremiah Jericho reminded them of Holden Caufield. I have heard about the book for years. I didn't have to read it when I was in high school and I don't think I'd appreciate it too much if I did. Right now I find it amusing and it fits. I'm writing Jeremiah Jericho with a pinch of me in him. And I can go off on tangents, so when I read that Holden does this, I feel in love with the book right away.

When people read what I have written and they dislike the tangents I don't edit them out. I might edit them down, but I won't remove them. There is character in each of the rants or tangents that happen with Jeremiah that if I remove them, his character might get lost in the voices of Christopher and Jeffrey.

Initially when I started “Jeremiah Jericho: Allowance” I wanted there to be only one voice: Christopher. As the story progressed and I decided to have Jeremiah as a reason for why someone committed suicide, I realized that Jeffrey could become an intricate part of the story itself. Which is how I like to write. I like to write with a bare bone idea of where the story is going and allow the story to flow out of me like people go through life. They don't have a writer directing their every move and even though my character does, he doesn't have to have me dictate everything. He can dictate some of what goes on. Only a writer can understand what I'm talking about there.

I understand he's not real, but when you write and your characters are speaking and acting and you think on the cuff of what they'd do, you're treating them as a real person. Giving them a life of their own without planning their every step. That's how I like to write. That's how Jeffrey came to be. If I didn't do that, it would be just Jeremiah and Christopher. I would feel that there was something missing.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like Holden Caufield.

I am enjoying writing my second book that's part of this trilogy. I'm writing fresh thoughts and ideas down. I think that it's coming about well. You always have to give a lot of humor to soften the blow of a evil moment and right now I'm laying on the humor because Jeremiah is headed back to NYC to attend a funeral. It's going to be a powerful moment for him and his mother.

That is a bit of me in there. Humor it up before something sad or, even, during something sad. I'm always allowed to be angry, but I cannot stand others being angry. I have to make them laugh or feel better.

Better stop before another tangent jumps out of me.

Write your dreams. Dream your words. And may your soul inspire the ages.